Arsenal have to do something they've never done to get potential £50m windfall

For Arsenal, having re-established themselves as part of the Champions League elite couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Gunners were out in the wilderness between 2017 and last year, the club having failed to finish in the top four of the Premier League from 2015/16 until Mikel Arteta guided them to a second-placed finish in 2022/23.

It remains to be seen whether they can go one better this season, a campaign where they look to be taking the title race to the wire in the same season they are competing on a European front in the Champions League, but there is no doubt that they will once again be part of Europe’s elite knockout club competition in 2024/25.

Champions League qualification is enormously valuable and can be worth well in excess of £100m per year for clubs who go deep into the competition. But Arsenal will have to go all the way this season if they are to avoid seeing their rivals get a timely revenue boost at a time when financial controls have become a concern that most clubs have to take into account.

From 2025, FIFA’s revamped Club World Cup competition will get lift-off, with the 32-team tournament to see clubs from six confederations compete in a lucrative summer showcase to be held in the United States, a booming market for the Premier League at present, and one that will be the focus of the world’s gaze in the summer of 2026 as the World Cup heads stateside.

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There will be a number of notable absences from the competition. European giants like Liverpool, Manchester United, AC Milan, and Barcelona won’t be in attendance, with a restriction on two clubs per association, with winners of Champions League competitions within the last three years permitted entry. For English football that is Manchester City and Chelsea.

But Arsenal still have a route to this lucrative summer competition, something that could greatly aid the club’s bottom line heading into a 2025/26 campaign where the Premier League will introduce new financial controls to replace its much-maligned profit and sustainability rules, with new rules to be aligned with UEFA’s squad cost ratio rule, where player and manager wages, amortisation costs, intermediary fees and severance costs are calculated as a percentage against operating revenue and player trading profit. For a club in European competition, it will be a 70% limit, for those outside it will be 85%.

Raising revenues through better player trading, increasing commercial revenue streams, raising ticket prices, and through competitive success on the pitch, is all impactful for the Gunners, but an appearance at the FIFA Club World Cup would present them with a unique chance to gain access to an exclusive and lucrative club that would allow them the opportunity to close the revenue gap on those guaranteed to be outside looking in, namely Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, and Manchester United.

In order to achieve this, however, Arsenal have to be faultless for the remainder of their Champions League campaign, going all the way to lift the trophy on June 1 at Wembley Stadium. They face the task of getting past Bayern Munich this evening in Germany after the two sides finished 2-2 at the Emirates Stadium last week. For the victors, a place in the semi-final.

The reason for that is that all the coefficients, the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, and LaLiga, have already been filled, and two clubs only are permitted entry. That, however, doesn’t apply to Champions League winners, so the Gunners can gain entry through winning the competition.

If they don’t then the final spot would go to Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg due to them being the highest-ranked UEFA club eligible to take part in the tournament. Liverpool, RB Leipzig, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla, and AC Milan are all ranked higher than Salzburg, but the two-team limit has already been reached for those countries.

In terms of how lucrative such a competition could be, it is understood that participation for clubs, dependent on success in the competition, could reach the £50m mark, which would be enormously impactful for clubs in terms of the bottom line, especially when it comes to easing potential financial control headaches, of which Chelsea will have more concern than Manchester City at present.

Speaking earlier this year, Daniel Haddad, head of commercial at global sports advisory firm Octagon, who has significant commercial experience in football, including in the Middle East, explained the potential upside, and future, of the new competition.

Said Haddad: “The development of other competition structures that involve other confederations is an interesting one. The FIFA Club World Cup from 2025, there is a very real possibility, I think, that if that tournament is a success then it becomes not just a once every four years competition.

"The way it becomes a success is that it doesn’t become a mini UEFA Champions League pre-season type competition because the 12 European clubs are the only ones that can win it. “If you actually have some good Saudi Pro League teams, for example, with good squads that can qualify for that and compete, then that competition structure becomes more valuable and more money goes back to the clubs. So, having strong clubs in other confederations doesn’t impact the day-to-day stuff for the Premier League teams. You aren’t competing against them in league or European competition, but you have the potential to generate revenue from those teams.”

The new format will feature the winners of the last four UEFA Champions Leagues, CONCACAF Champions Cups, AFC Champions Leagues, and CAF Champions Leagues. The rest of the competition will be made up of eligible teams from each territory based on a four-year ranking system, as well as a team from the host nation.

FIFA made the move to revamp the Club World Cup format against the backdrop of the failed bid by 12 clubs, Liverpool included, to break away and form a European Super League in 2021. While all but Real Madrid and Barcelona have distanced themselves from the plan, the European Court of Justice will rule on December 21 whether or not UEFA and FIFA’s threat of sanctions to clubs wanting to form another competition was lawful or not, potentially kicking open the door to another move to launch a competition in the future.